Guido Fawked – Just Another MSM Toady

So the residency of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer, the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, at the Daily Star Sunday has ended, and the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere have been elevated to the giddy heights of the Sunday Sun, there to join another rabble, that being Rupe’s downmarket troops, where they might actually get paid in money.

Yeah, I did the deal in the pub, shit, no, office. While I was on the lash, sod it, no, phone. And drinking a cocktail, bollocks, no, coffee. With a slug of whisky in it. Oh sod it

Some have feigned surprise at this news, but in reality, it is entirely predictable. Those who still cling to the idea that The Great Guido is some kind of brave, crusading outsider taking on the mainstream media establishment are utterly deluded: Staines has been grovelling to the MSM for some time now, fetching and carrying for them, doing their dirty work and singing their praises.

I deserve my own column, cos I'm on telly!

There is only one motivation behind this behaviour – penning a fawning approval of the Mail’s unhinged hatchet job on one of Leveson’s advisors while kicking the Media Standards Trust, or talking up Murdoch while laying into Tom Watson – and that is to ingratiate the Fawkes rabble with the MSM. Not for them the experience of Adam Macqueen, dismissed from the Mail because he had worked for Private Eye.

Bit of a crawler

Indeed, there has been an assault on the Eye only last week: this, too, will find favour with those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet. And to please their beloved Rupe sufficiently to have him give them a column, the less than dynamic duo played down Phonehackgate and talked up Andy Coulson almost to the point when he departed Young Dave’s jolly good service.

Biggest pisshead more like

And if all of that was not sufficient, there was always the cherry on the cake in the form of the Fawkes blog’s incessant pillorying of the deeply subversive Guardian, ensuring that the part of the MSM that maintained its culture of Omerta and didn’t blow the whistle on the Screws would recognise a fellow traveller. Thus the Fawkes blog is nowadays in lockstep with the mainstream.

Aye, like a cowflap with a banger in it

Add to that the nice little earner that Staines has developed selling stories and photos to the MSM, and his apprenticeship at the Star, and it is not difficult to see why the Sun – the paper trusted by 10% of respondents to a recent survey – is not being even slightly radical or ground-breaking in giving a column to a blog trusted by a mere 4% in the same survey. The Fawkes fawning has paid off.

So will the new column, as has been promised, be “explosive”? That depends very much on the legal team keeping an eye on the content. Meanwhile, the idea of becoming an MSM sell-out has even led to Murdoch’s praises being sung by the repellent creep Milo Yiannopoulos in his Kernel Mag. But then, Rupe is most unlikely to ever be that desperate, despite the grovelling.

Meanwhile, some out there still believe The Great Guido is a principled rebel. Mugs.